Today, retailers and manufacturers have very little influence on a shopper's use of store-bought products. Also, these same retailers and manufacturers have few effective ways to acquire input from shoppers once a product has been purchased and taken out of a store. Thus, the store's ability to understand shoppers' use of a product, gage enjoyment thereof, and influence future purchasing decisions is limited. While the Internet is available for some degree of interaction between shoppers and their purchases, it is typically scatter shot and not directed to a shopper's specific purchases and use of those purchased products and not robust enough to interact with shoppers in a convenient, portable manner.
A retailer's and a supplier's need to influence shoppers do not end after a purchase is made, but continue after the point of sale. In order to encourage store loyalty and encourage shoppers to make purchases which increase stores' and suppliers' profit margins, stores and suppliers desire economic and effective methods to influence shoppers after shoppers have interacted with products or taken products home, to encourage shoppers to purchase the products on a continuing basis. Consequently, stores and suppliers often provide coupons at the point of sale.
Today, shoppers are often overwhelmed with numerous misdirected, non-specific buying options and advertisements encouraging them to purchase products that may or may not be relevant to a shopper's specific shopping profile. Retailers and packaged goods manufacturers often overwhelm shoppers with volumes of information attempting to influence their choice of which product to purchase. Sales promotions can encompass a wide variety of different actions and procedures designed to stimulate product sales. Sales promotion include, for example, in-store purchase suggestions from sales clerks, limited-time price reductions on items, in-store announcements of products over public address systems, coupons distributed in a store to shoppers or distributed via newspaper and magazine inserts to readers for future redemption with a purchase, and more sophisticated multimedia programs presented over special display kiosks that display or play to passing shoppers. Decisions on particular sales promotions to be employed are frequently made as part of a national or regional marketing campaign in which data concerning sales trends are studied to discern patterns that help in the sales promotion decision. Often, the sales promotion to be used at a particular store and the time at which the promotion will be used are left to management at each store or to individual sales clerks and other store personnel.
Currently, coupons distributed at the point of sale are not targeted to individual shoppers based upon specific needs, wants or shopping history and are generally of the traditional paper type. The approach presents several problems. First, coupons may not influence shoppers to purchase products because shoppers may not use the products for which they are receiving coupons. Second, because the coupons are paper, they are easy to lose or damage. Third, because the coupons are on paper, shoppers must keep track of the expiration dates of each coupon and plan trips to the store accordingly.
Therefore, what is needed is a system that 1) interacts with a shopper before, during or after a shopper's use of a purchased product, 2) collects information from shoppers about their personal use of purchased products during or after the time of use, and 3) influences shoppers with influential messages tailored to specific shoppers and delivered to shoppers prior to or at the moment when a shopper considers a product purchase and considers which store to make a purchase. What is also needed is a method of electronic delivery of such influential messages for improved organization of the influential messages and, if applicable, the expiration dates of the discount offers contained in the influential messages.